Facilitating a group discussion always brings with it a unique set of challenges. Every group involves different personalities, perspectives, and needs. Facilitators have to work hard to create an environment in which a productive conversation can take place. When the facilitator is also the boss, the process gets even more complicated. The atmosphere in the...
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Earlier this year, Greg Owen-Boger posted a blog entry here called “TRUST: It’s Yours to Lose.” In it, he talked about what a senior executive needed to do to keep the trust of the people in his organization. Greg’s point was about being genuine, transparent, and respecting the needs and views of others. Today I’d like...
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This is a follow-up to the blog I wrote a few months ago, They Won’t Speak if You Don’t Listen. In that post, I mentioned that facilitators have two fundamental goals. They need to (1) encourage participation in the conversation and (2) control the discussion once it begins. As I said, facilitators often spend too much...
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One of the biggest problems facilitators have is very basic: failure to stay in the moment to listen and respond to what people have to say. When we work with facilitators in our workshops, we always say that there are two primary goals in every discussion. (1) Facilitators need to encourage the conversation. They need...
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Earlier this week, I was coaching a senior executive on a very high-stakes presentation. He told me he wanted to be perceived as trustworthy. Setting trustworthiness as a goal is common among our clients, so there was nothing new about it in this situation. But as the discussion went on, he asked me what he...
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